Tag: Zen

A monk asked Kyûhô, “What is the head?”

Kyûhô said, “Opening the eyes and not perceiving the dawn.”

The monk said, “What is the tail?”

Kyûhô said, “Not sitting on a ten-thousand-year-old sitting place.”

The monk said, “What if there is a head, but no tail?”

Kyûhô said, “After all, it is not valuable.”

The monk said, “What if there is a tail, but no head?”

Kyûhô said, “Being complacent, yet having no power.”

The monk said, “What if the head matches the tail?”

Kyûhô said, “The descendants will prosper, but it is not known in the room.”

A monk asked Shuzan, “What is Buddha?”

Shuzan said, “When a bride rides the donkey, her mother-in-law leads it by the bridle.”

Head Monk Shisho asked Hogen, “You have opened a zendo, Master. But who did you succeed to?”

Hogen said, “Master Jizo.”

Shisho said, “You have gone a great deal against your late master Chokei.”

Hogen said, “I still don’t understand a turning word of Chokei’s.”

Shisho said, “Why didn’t you ask me?”

Hogen said, “‘The one body manifests itself in myriad phenomena’, what does it mean?”

Shisho stuck up his whisk. Hogen said, “That is what you learned under Chokei. What is your own view, Head Monk?”

Shisho was silent.

Hogen said, “When it is said, ‘The one body manifests itself in myriad phenomena’, are the myriad phenomena swept away or are they not?”

Shisho said, “Not swept away.”

Hogen said, “There are two.”

All the disciples on the right and the left side said, “Swept away.”

Hogen said, “The one body manifests itself in myriad phenomena, Nii!”

A monk asked Master Kempô in all earnestness, “In a certain sutra it says, ‘Ten-direction Bhagavats, one Way to the gate of nirvana.’ I wonder where the Way is.”

Kempô lifted up his stick, drew a line and said, “Here it is.”

The monk told Unmon about this and asked him.

Unmon said, “This fan jumps up to the heaven of the thirty-three devas and adheres to the nose of the deva Taishaku. When a carp in the eastern sea is struck with a stick, it rains torrents as though a tray of water is overturned.”

Ryû Tetsuma came to Isan.

Isan said, “Old Cow, you have come!”

Tetsuma said, “Tomorrow there will be a great feast at Mt. Tai. Will you go there, Master?”

Isan lay down and stretched himself out.

Tetsuma left immediately.

A monk asked Seirin, “How is it when a practitioner goes along a narrow path?”

Seirin said, “You will meet a deadly snake on the great road. I advise you not to run into it.”

The monk said, “What if I do run into it?”

Seirin said, “You will lose your life.”

The monk said, “What if I don’t run into it?”

Seirin said, “You have no place to escape from it.”

The monk said, “Precisely at such a time, what then?”

Seirin said, “It is lost.”

The monk said, “I wonder where it is gone.”

Seirin said, “The grass is so deep, there is no place to look for it.”

The monk said, “You too, Master, must be watchful in order to get it.”

Seirin clapped his hands and said, “This fellow is equally poisonous.”

The Diamond Sutra says,

“It is about getting despised by other people.

If you are to come into hell because of your sins in your previous life,

these sins will be extinguished because you are despised by the people of this world.”

When Uncle Misshi and Tôzan were walking together, they saw a white rabbit run by in
front of them.

Misshi said, “How swift!”

Tôzan said, “In what way?”

Misshi said, “It is just like a person in white clothes being venerated as a prime minister.”

Tôzan said, “You are such an elderly and respectable man, and still you say something like that?”

Misshi said, “Then how about you?”

Tôzan said, “A noble of an ancient house is temporarily fallen into poverty.”

Ungan asked Dôgo, “What does the Bodhisattva of the Great Mercy use so many hands and
eyes for?”

Dôgo answered, “It is like a person in the middle of the night reaching with his
hand behind his head groping for his pillow.”

Ungan said, “I understood.”

Dôgo said, “How did you understand it?”

Ungan said, “The whole body is hands and eyes.”

Dôgo said, “You said it very well. But you expressed only eight-tenths of it.”

Ungan said, “How would you say it, Elder Brother?”

Dôgo said, “The entire body is hands and eyes.”

Ôbaku instructed the assembly and said, “You are all drinkers of lees. If you continue to go on your Way like this, where will the ‘Today’ be? Do you know that in this great empire of Tang there is no Zen master?”

Now a monk came forward and said, “What would you say to the fact that in various places there are people who accept students and direct their assemblies?”

Ôbaku said, “I don’t say that there is no Zen; I only say that there is no master.”